Today was a unique day. First, instead of riding groups, we rode in pairs because we knew there would be a lot of climbing (groups tend to get separated a lot on climbs, so it makes more sense to ride with fewer people). I rode with Emily Lake. Because she is one of the quieter people on the team, I thought the ride would be completely silent, but pleasantly enough she ended up talking to me about her swimming at Towson University. I always thought that I never slept well enough in college, but hearing Emily talk about waking up at 3-4AM everyday to be at swim practice 5AM and how basically swimming was her entire life made me appreciate what sleep I did get.
While we started off with some long climbs, everything was relatively gradual so none of it was too much of a problem. We passed some other pairs and joined some others for brief periods of time, so the morning went by really fast.
So this triumphant picture you see of me was one of the high points of the day... and then things kind of fell apart for a bit after this... you see for some bizarre reason, although I knew we would be doing a ton of climbing that day, I didn't really eat much all day. A basic rule of cycling nutrition is that when you have harder rides (e.g. climbing), you need more calories (duh)... But for some reason this idea went over my head and I barely ate anything at any of the water stops in the morning. So soon after this picture was taken, I became very hungry and fatigued. As any cyclist will tell you, if you become really hungry, it's pretty much too late to bounce back, because anything you eat will take a long time to be digested and converted into energy. So I really struggled to climb the second half of the day, and thankfully my climbing partner Emily was really patient and she didn't mind stopping constantly. We did have a lot of places to take nice pictures and what not, but we definitely stopped more often than I would have liked.
Fortunately shortly after, I got a big boost when the food van showed up at the top of a hill and handed us grilled chicken sandwiches. I haven't eaten that quickly in some time...
The last part of the day was a bit of a let down because our route ended up being not even gravel, but just grass. We knew there was gravel ahead, so Emily, Ari, Chelsea (alum), and I scouted ahead past the gravel. While there were some spectacular views, the road just turned into some grass and trees. We figured our road bikes have already had to endure enough gravel, we ended up shuttling the last 15-20 miles into Laramie. A bit disappointing since the entire ride would have been a big downhill, but safety first (we skipped an interstate).
Chelsea the alum pondering the difficulty of riding road bikes on grass / trees
A slightly different angle of the same pic, in which Margrethe decries the absence of a paved road
Ok so it might not look it, but I promise the view from where this picture was taken was amazing. I think Emily Lipsitz (van driver that day) described it as *ahhhhh insert Hallelujah noise*
Anyway, we shuttled into the town (as usual the van packed to the roof). We had a great dinner provided by the First Baptist Church in town. Showers kind of fell through at the last minute *oops*, so while some people showered at the church members' homes, a number of us (including me) opted to stay stinky for one more day. After all, we'd be biking soon after anyway, so who cares... right?
Highlight of the night was when the three alums Chelsea, Bradley, and V were about to leave Tori, Kelsey, and I smashed cupcakes into their faces. Of course being clumsy, I somehow managed to hit Chelsea right in the eye with a chocolate frosted cupcake (she doesn't even like chocolate apparently). But it was all fun and of course Chelsea had to smear some of it on me.
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